herebenotions

Context rules

The good, the bad and the ugly of display advertising

The good.

Yes, everyone has linked to it.  I love it.
Experience wii

And another example of good online advertising from Doritos:



But, don't we all think this at some point?



The Ugly - I can't believe there are still ads like this around.

Unsurprising

Source

People cited online ads from 888.com, Dulux, Ford, Garnier, Halifax and L’Oreal as being particularly annoying or intrusive.

Bugbears included:

• Ads with loud noises
• Pop-ups covering web content
• Ads that were difficult to close, minimise or click away from

Source: 2008 Research by Opinion Matters among 1,046 adults aged 16+.

Hyperlink the world

I’ve been interested in semacode for a while. It seems like such a great idea: condense a webpage url down to a small square of code that can be snapped with a mobile camera phone; the software on the phone automatically decodes the semacode and takes you to the webpage.

So, for example a Harry Potter book on Amazon has the following web address...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Harry-Potter-Half-Blood-Prince-Childrens/dp/0747584680/sr=8-3/qid=1160080505/ref=pd_ka_3/026-7768011-7418845?ie=UTF8&s=books

A bit long winded to stick on a poster or flyer and expect someone to type it into their phone or remember it by the time they get home.

But turn it into semacode and you have...a black and white square sematag.

Might not be pretty, but easy to add to communications.  For example, a concert poster which would link you to a page to buy tickets. This is huge in Japan.

But there are so many uses for this beyond immediate sales or vouchering.  It's a great chance to bring the story of a product right to consumers at the point of decision. You could add these to the back of bottles of wine to take people instantly to a site where they can read about the growers and wine region.  Because the semacode design is so simple and scaleable, you can do interesting things like set the lights of a skyscraper's window to create a giant semocde that people can see for miles around.

One other interesting use is in hyperlinking geographical locations.  The main project for this is semapedia. Here you create a semacode link toa wikipedia page about a geographical location.  then go and stick the code up at the location for passers-by to interact with. Quite a nice way to find out what a statue is all about, or what happens in a building.

There's are several groups on flickr where people upload their semacode sightings from around the world...

e-relationships

At podlove you can find a quirky series of short documentaries about relationships and technology in the 21st century. 

I like the treatment of 'I love like blood'. 

 

Search just got sexy

Ms Dewey

(Be patient whilst she loads.)

She’s impatiently funny if you’re slow to type your request.

A nice twist on the now rather mundane search engine. Now try generating unexpected responses (e.g. try: video, police, halo, soccer, apple).  Anyway, it gives a glimpse at what personalised search sometime in the future might be like.  It’s from Microsoft.

For discussion go here.

Stuff people do online

Live toptrumps on myspace or LJ:  examples viewable here.  Find a person who's already playing and use their combat card to generate yourself one, then seek and do battle.

Quite a nice example of what people are getting up to on the internet, like Russell Davies  et al. are talking about here and here. 

Not as much fun as Street Wars in the real world though!